


Nothing But My Aching Soul

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 1920s, F/M, The Great Gatsby References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 09:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11597508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: When the Time Bureau picks up the latest anomaly - the Great Gatsby suddenly becoming a real historical person and event - Rip is send to fix this. He just doesn't expect to run into her there, in 1920s New York City, as well.





	Nothing But My Aching Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSushiMonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSushiMonster/gifts).



> For Ripsara Week, Day 2: Period AU
> 
> and also for Shruti! Whose birthday it is today and who when asked to pick a time period told me 1920s so, here we are!

“Somebody made Gatsby real.”

Four words and Rip already regrets appointing himself as head of an organization set to? righting the wrongs of history. 

Four words is all it takes, because he an idea 

“Like the book?”

“Yeah, now he’s a real historical figure, or a real historical mystery according to-”

“For god’s sake.” Rip pinches the bridge of his nose. Looking around the group of them, the time agents he had assembled to help him fix time, his penance of a sort for the fact that breaking time may have technically been partially his fault. “How does one even manage that?”

“I don’t know, sir, I could look into it?”

“No,” he says, “I’ll do it.” 

It’s not necessary. The point of running the Time Bureau was to be able to sit back a bit and let people he trusted sort of these sorts of things, but there was something about this one in particular that stuck out to him.

 

*

 

He parks his ship - not the Waverider because he left that with Sara and the team, but a new ship, smaller and built for quick in and out mission - just outside the gates of the manor.  _ Gatsby’s Manor _ , where a party is already in full swing. 

Because of course it.

Because when Time Pirates messed with time, they never went for the stealth option, no it was flashing lights and loud music, breaking off of time. 

This was why he hated Time Pirates, even if once upon a time, he had been technically considered one. More like a  _ rogue Time Agent _ , but the point was he had never been this bad.

Excluding that time he was under the Legion of Doom’s control and that most certainly didn’t count. 

He tells himself that as he makes his way into the party, following the crowd, the gathered cars, the hurry of people. People who don’t pay him any mind, who don’t even give him a second glance as they enter the manor, as they mingle out on the lawns, as they swim in a pool that reminds him all too clearly how  _ The Great Gatsby  _ ended. 

Whoever was living out this fantasy must never have finished the book. 

Otherwise surely they wouldn’t want to -

“Fancy seeing you in a place like this.” 

He’s not expecting to be talked to, not until later, when everyone started drinking and it will be easier to get information about this  _ Gatsby  _ out of them, and certainly not by a familiar voice. 

Though he’s not as surprised as he should be. 

She’s there leaning against the balcony beside him, in a white dress that seems to be made of more crystals than actual fabric, a strand of pearls dipping between her cleavage, while a familiar smirk lingers there on her lips. 

“How’s it going being a Time Cop?”

He doesn’t answer her question. 

Her little joke, the one she had last told him while sprawled across the couch in his new apartment, wearing nothing but a sports bra and - 

“Sara.”

“Rip?”

“Did Gideon pick up on this anomaly?” 

She shrugs. A not answer.

“What anomaly?”

“One day I’m going to arrest you for being a Time Pirate,” he tells her.

This gets a laugh out of her. A wonderful thing that he’s missed. He’s missed the sound of her, and of their team, more than he would ever admit. 

“Aren’t you the one that told me to go find a period of time to keep myself occupied in,” Sara asks, “Am I not doing that?”

There’s something about the way she says it. 

Sara has a way of saying things like that, putting words together in a way that just makes him more confused than when he started. She only really seems to do it to him, always when she’s teasing him.

He’s long since forgotten how not to find it endearing. 

“You’re looking for a Mr. Gatsby, aren’t you,” she asks him, grabbing a flute of champagne from a waiter.

She seems more interested in holding it, aesthetically so, than drinking it. 

He’s caught by the image for a second, the way she stands there looking so completely like she belongs here. The light reflecting off the crystals in her dress. She’s beautiful.

This is not the first time he’s been struck by her beauty. 

He hates to have to break the image to bring reality crashing down around them. 

“You do know Gatsby isn’t real right?”

This time Sara does look puzzled, finally tipping her drink back. 

When she finishes it she sets it down on the balcony they had previously been leaning on. 

“Of course Gatsby is real,” Sara insists, “We’re at his party aren’t we?”

“He’s a story, Sara, we need to fix this and-”

“ _ We _ ,” she says, voice lighting up like a question, “And now I thought I wasn’t good enough to be a Time Cop?”

“Sara-” 

She steps into his space then and for a second he freezes, he doesn’t mean to, he has more control than this but for a second he forgets as much. 

Forgets anything other than the way her hand feels curling against his arm. 

Forgets anything other than the way she presses leans down to whisper in his ear, nearly kissing the side of his face.

“Enjoy the party,  _ Captain  _ Hunter.”

Forgets himself long enough that he doesn’t realize she’s slipped away until she’s gone. Mixed in with the crowd not to be found again. 

Though he’ll spend the night, in between asking drunks what they know of their  _ host _ , looking for her.

 

*

  
  


He wakes up with a slight hangover, no answers, and the ship’s proximity alert going off. 

She’s sitting against a tree across from where he’s parked his ship when he opens the door. In pants this time, a newsboy cap on her head to hide her long hair, and that wild grin that spells  _ trouble  _ there on her lips.

“You’re up to something.” 

“I’d never,” she insists, faux innocent. 

He knows better than that.

She knows that he knows better than that.

“Drive me around the city, Rip, I have errands to run,” Sara says, “People to meet, a city to see.”

“Is that right?”

“You’ve never experienced the 1920s till you’ve experienced it in New York.”

He wouldn’t disagree with that. There was something about this city and this time that was almost magical, that had captured audiences’ imaginations for generations to come, though he never would have taken Sara for one of those sorts of people.

Instead of dwelling on this new assessment of her character, he asks, “When were you in the 1920s before?”

“Chicago, Legion of Doom, met Al Capone,” Sara pauses tilting her head to the side, “Well technically we were held captive but-”

“I don’t actually want to know.”

“We fixed it in the end,” she insists.

Because of course they did. 

He could usually count on the Legends to put time back in order, for the most part, with a few minor mistakes but they were untrained and he had been… gone. He couldn’t blame them for that. Though breaking all of time had been another story. 

“You’re up to trouble, aren’t you?”

“Oh am I ever.”

“Sara-”

“I know a guy who claims he fixed World Series, now being a time traveler makes betting unfair, but I’m curious,” Sara cuts him off, “Aren’t you curious?” 

This is another part of the story.

He’s aware of that. 

All too aware of where she’s going to take him, down through the city streets, down to a dingy bar where the call her  _ Mr. Lance  _ even though anybody could tell that there’s a woman beneath that cap, to a city where the heat is sweltering, and Rip is all too aware that he doesn’t belong here. 

He’ll tell her that later, tucked into the corner of the bar, waiting on her  _ contact  _ to arrive.

“This is part of the story.” 

“What story,” she asks him. 

“ _ The Great Gatsby _ .”

“You’re still looking for him,” she asks, sounding like there’s some big joke that he’s not apart of. 

He doesn’t get to ask her what the punchline is because their contact appears, and the story continues on, and Sara leans back against him just ever so slightly, and he forgets what he was going to ask her. 

 

*

 

It keeps happening.

Sara keeps appearing with a smile on her face.

He keeps not finding any answers.

The story keeps moving on.

He doesn’t realize it though, not really, not what it all means until he’s sitting in a hotel room watching ice melt and it all clicks into place.

He’s the Nick of this story. 

Which means that Sara is - 

“Rip,” she says, cutting off his train of thought. 

And he looks away from the pool of water that’s begun to form, instead focuses on her, on Sara leaning back against the plush white sheets of their hotel bedroom.

Accusations could wait until morning.

Especially when her hand reaches out through the hot air, as if calling him towards her, “I think I wouldn’t mind getting a little hotter.”

Tomorrow, he’ll deal with realizations.

With what this means for the Time Bureau and the Legends.

With what this means for  _ them _ .

Today he’ll make the same mistake he made months ago when she was sitting on his couch and held a similar hand out to him. The same mistake he’ll make time and time again. 

 

*

 

“You’re Gatsby.”

She doesn’t deny it. 

How can she, sitting there on a plush couch, in a beaded dressing gown, in the house that is said to belong to  _ Gatsby _ . Instead she just looks at him, lets out a gasp that isn’t anywhere close to real, an overdramatic act, “I’m Gatsby.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s hilarious,” she insists, though she does not laugh. “We’re you the one that said I needed a vacation. That’s what I’m doing, having a vacation, straight from the classics.”

“I meant in Aruba with Mick,” Rip insists, his own voice colored with anger, with concern, with the fact that it’s another one of her messes he’s been dispatched through time to fix. Sometimes he regrets picking Sara to be part of the team, back in the beginning, when he hadn’t known they would end up like this. “Not pretending to be a fictional character.”

“You should have been more specific.”

“I thought you couldn’t read.”

It’s an old joke.

An old joke from the team. 

Sara holding an instruction manual above her heading insisting that she couldn’t read until Jax finally took it from her hands and got to work.

Though he doesn’t say it like a joke now, he says it heavy and bitter. 

How did they get here? 

“I don’t want to,” she corrects, “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t forced to back in school. I got most of the way through this one.” 

_ Most of the way. _

“You didn’t finish the book.”

She shrugs. “I might have watched the movie, I don’t remember.”

“Gatsby dies in the end.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I died,” Sara points out.

And there’s a beat of silence.

A moment where he can’t help but remember the last time she died.

When it had been at his hand. 

When he finally finds his words, his throat seems tighter than it was moments before, the anger and frustration from a week of being here in New York City with her playing games with him seems to slip away at once, as he says, “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you left the team.”

“You let me go,” he points out.

Because she did.

Because he would have stayed if she had told him to.

Because he still wasn’t sure he had made the right decision. 

She doesn’t answer him right away. 

Looks away from him.

Out the window, to where the lawns, and the pool, and the city sprawl out in front of them. 

He follows her gaze, just for a moment, just long enough to lose himself here.

He can see why she wanted it. The idea of it. Of being a person that didn’t exist in a place that was more myth than reality. 

An escape.

He had wanted that too.

But they couldn’t have that, not for people like them. 

“One last party,” she says, “A farewell.”

He can at least give her this, echoing her, “A farewell.”

 

*

 

There’s something magical about it.

About the music.

And the party.

And the people.

And the woman with a dress made of gold.

And the way he knows in the morning that she’ll be gone, off lost somewhere in time. 

And the way he knows he’ll go back to the Time Bureau and file the paperwork, and pretend this never happened.

There’s something magical about her.

Smiling at him in a city and time that doesn’t belong to either of them, saying, “Dance with me, Rip, for old time’s sake.” 

  
  



End file.
